Birthday Present
by Daria234
Summary: Pre-series Neal/Kate.  Neal wants to paint the perfect forgery, but it takes its toll on his relationship with Kate. Written for Ash's birthday. Het with non!evil!Kate, don't read if you don't like.


Neal wanted to paint the perfect copy of Van Gogh's study of irises. Not the famous one - one of the lesser known, smaller versions that would face less scrutiny. But which were, although less magnificent, much more charming in Neal's opinion. They were, after all, more personal.

Kate, on the other hand, was more interested in enjoying the city than the details of a flawless copy. In other words, she wanted to enjoy the city from somewhere other than the couch of their apartment. So she left him alone, found her own projects or amusements that Neal had no part of.

And the surprising thing was, Neal kept painting, kept practicing that copy.

It was the first time since they met that he wanted something more than he wanted to thrill her.

He painted furiously and at all hours, and it took over him in the way that only the quest for perfection could. He was particularly obsessed with the curve of the petal on the far left: was it beginning to wilt? Or was it uneven because it was still unfolding, mimicking life although cut off from its roots?

The detail was important. No one would believe his work was real if he couldn't get that petal right.

And then there was the mixing. He managed the blues and the purples just fine, but something about that one yellow stripe in the background - Neal could tell he wasn't quite getting the exact hue. So he mixed and mixed and mixed and he would paint the stripe and then he would step back and see that it was wrong wrong wrong.

Kate thought it looked fine.

She said so when she was there. But mostly, she wasn't. She was off doing other things, and Neal, even in his frenzy of meticulous work, had noticed. The way she barely bothered to check his progress any more. The way she left an apple or some cheese and bread by his easel wordlessly, as if she were obligated to prevent him from starving but didn't think of him otherwise.

She was trying to accommodate him, he could see. But someone as extraordinary as Kate couldn't be expected to put up with someone like Neal for much longer, he knew. Especially not when he was acting like this.

He would make it up to her.

After he took care of that stripe. And that petal.

Of course, it was pure fantasy on Neal's part that he would decide when that would happen. Because one day she walked up to him with the cat-who-ate-the-canary smile she had. And Neal wondered, not very graciously, if he were about to get dumped.

Instead, she held out a small box wrapped in dark blue paper.

"What for?" Neal said, touched to receive a present.

She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to figure it out, but he just stared.

"It's your birthday," she said, amused.

She was right, Neal realized, looking at the wall calendar. And Kate was one of the few people who actually knew his real birthday. And naturally Kate, unlike Moz, would utterly ignore the fact that Neal wasn't in the habit of celebrating his birthday.

"I'm surprised you remembered," Neal said, though what he meant was 'I'm surprised you got me something since every second I'm not painting, I'm thinking about how you're probably about to leave me for being an obsessed artist-type who can't even create original work.'

"Of course I remembered. Open it."

Neal carefully removed the paper and opened the small box.

A small vial of paint. Worn and old and half used up. With a Dutch label, and some paint crusted around the lid.

Yellow paint.

_Yellow paint._

"How?" Neal asked, astounded.

That mysterious smile. "It's the perfect yellow. So you can finish the perfect copy. It's important to you," she added, as if that were reason enough to track down a century-old vial of paint in a color that was no longer manufactured.

"I can't believe you did that."

"Be careful with it. They stopped making it because it bled through the skin and made people sick."

"I've never been so happy to get poisonous paint."

She laughed and he kissed her. She might want the world, but she wanted Neal too, and not just when he promised to give her everything. He knew at that moment that Kate would be the one. The one who would stick by him, even when it was tough.

No matter what Mozzie said.

And he surprised her then. Because suddenly something was stronger than his need to paint. He placed the paint delicately on the easel and they both went into the bedroom and didn't talk about art for the rest of the night.

He never told her that it was the first time someone had gotten a birthday present that he actually wanted. He still hadn't told her much about his childhood, and explaining that fact would have just raised questions.

But it meant a lot, her present. It meant everything.

It meant that there was someone who would love him even when he wasn't perfect.

It was a good night.

The next morning, he got up early and painted a yellow stripe. He stood back and looked at it for just a second to check.

It was exactly right.

Neal decided, then, that the petal wasn't so noticeable after all. He sold his work for a tidy sum and used the cash to take Kate back to Paris.


End file.
